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Friday, March 12, 2010

Sun Chips New 100% Compostable Bag (and Video)

As I’m sure some of y’all know, Sun Chips has recently started rolling out its new 100% compostable bag in Canadian retail stores. Very cool.

I had heard about this a few weeks back, but only recently had a chance to scope out the time lapse video they put together that shows the bag breaking down in ~14 weeks in a commercial composting system that reaches 55 degrees C.

There have been a few different write-ups on the bag (my favorite is Triple Pundit’s, as a representative from Sun Chips answers some tough questions really well in the comments).

I wanted to highlight the video specifically though, as I think it’s really quite fantastic. Check it out:

Straight from Sun Chips:“As you might imagine creating a window into this environment was a bit tricky. We built a chamber for composting to take place under typical conditions, but replaced one of the walls with a glass window to see inside. While this gave us a unique view into the composting process, it also created some unforeseen challenges. For example, the glass was more conducive to heat loss than the walls of a typical compost bin. To counteract this force, we had to heat the glass so that it would not cause the compost pile to lose more heat than it normally would.

The results were a way to peer inside an active compost pile with a sample of the new Sun Chips film in plain view. We were careful to keep the conditions typical for a well run compost facility – nothing different than natural conditions for heat and moisture. We then set up a camera to monitor the decomposition and snapped pictures every 15 minutes for 14 weeks. The results are self-evident and demonstrate the ability of this film to decompose in a compost bin fairly quickly.”

Love it. Understanding that this is marketing, I’ll be the first to say that it’s really really powerful marketing, and I think it’s quite moving to see the bag breakdown right before your eyes.

A big kudos to Sun Chips for going the extra mile to get this made – I hope it gets lots of great play across the web.